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If your company struggles to retain staff, then there’s something wrong. Good employee retention indicates that your staff are satisfied with their jobs, how much they get paid, and their responsibilities. Employee retention is strongly linked with employee satisfaction. When employees are more satisfied with their jobs, then they are more likely to work harder.
In answer to this article’s titular question: Employee retention matters because it helps you to figure out whether or not you are treating your employees well and is also linked with productivity.
This post will now tell you how you can invest in employee retention.
Calculating Attrition
Before you can begin investing in (and improving) your company’s employee retention, you need to calculate your attrition rate. The attrition rate is a statistic used to determine how fast people leave a company, after being hired. More often than not, attrition rates are expressed as percentages. Your HR department can then use your company’s attrition rate to figure out what’s going on, how happy customers are, and develop solutions for improving employee retention. Once you know what your attrition rate is, you can then decide whether or not it’s actually necessary for you to invest in employee retention. If you are already retaining employees, then investment might not be necessary.
Mentorship Programs
Offering mentorship programs can be a highly effective way of improving your company’s employee retention. The reason for this is quite simple, really. People want to develop and advance in their careers. Many companies don’t give people the opportunity to do this, though. By offering mentorship programs, you are essentially giving people the promise of a future. Experienced staff members can work with less experienced ones, helping them to develop the skills that they need to succeed.
Offering Benefits
Another way of improving your company’s employee retention rates is to offer them benefits, like paid leave, more than 28 days of holiday time, and bonuses. More and more companies are starting to offer benefits because they are realising how important they are. People looking for jobs are actively avoiding applying for positions that don’t offer benefits. One type of benefit that can get you a lot of applicants (and then ensure that employees continue to work for you after being hired) is insurance. Offering people complementary health insurance will make them more passionate about working for you.
Higher Salaries
You don’t just need to offer employees benefits; you also need to offer them higher salaries. Nobody wants to work for a pittance. People are starting to expect higher salaries. A lot of young people are flat-out refusing to work because they aren’t being paid enough. So, if you want to attract candidates, and then keep them on your staff, you should offer competitive salaries. Again, you should also give people the opportunity to work overtime and earn bonuses. Working overtime and earning bonuses can make your employees’ lives a lot easier.
Employee Onboarding
Something else to consider if you want to improve employee retention is your company’s onboarding process. If onboarding isn’t efficient, employees won’t want to work for you. Also, you should offer post-onboarding care. Once an employee has been onboarded, make sure that HR check-in with them on a regular basis and makes sure that they are assimilating to life in your company more easily. Make sure that training is offered to staff, too. Once they have started working with you, ensure they attend periodic training sessions designed to improve and hone their skills.
Regular Feedback
Ask employees for feedback. While collecting feedback won’t necessarily improve employee retention directly, it will help you to figure out what’s going on (and what’s upsetting employees, if they aren’t sticking around for long). When asking for feedback, it is a good idea to ask them to provide it anonymously. People will talk more freely when they are providing feedback anonymously. If you ask them to live their name and employee number, they are unlikely to want to give honest feedback, in case they upset anybody. You should send out feedback questionnaires once a month. You should also encourage staff to get in touch with you if they have any complaints.
Open Communication
Encouraging staff to get in touch with you if they have any complaints will make them feel more comfortable. When employees feel more comfortable, they are more likely to stay with a company. Unfortunately, though, managers very rarely check in with employees and ask them how they are doing, and if they have anything to say, or even communicate with them. One good way of showing employees that you care about them is to send them handwritten birthday messages, or emails. Doing this shows that you care about your employee’s feelings and that you value them.
Diverse Workplace
Diversity and inclusion are things that employees are very concerned about at the moment. If you want to attract staff, then ensure you have a diverse workforce. Try to do as much as you can to employ people of colour and from marginalized backgrounds or with protected characteristics. With that said, do not hire people just because of their race or any protected characteristics. Hire people because of their skills and talents, but do not discriminate against anybody. You can also send your staff away to undergo DEI training. DEI training is offered by most companies today.
Wellness Support
Finally, offer staff wellness support. The United States is experiencing a mental health epidemic at the moment, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. If you want your staff to be happy, and want them to work hard, then you need to do everything that you can to ensure that they are in good mental health. You can hire a counsellor to come in on certain days of the week, with an open-door policy. Then, employees can go in and see the counsellor to discuss their issues. You should not punish employees for stopping work and going in to see the counsellor.
If you want employees to be more satisfied with their jobs (and work with you long-term) then you need to incorporate the tips outlined here. Higher employee retention generally means that you offer employees a positive workplace, and good, reliable jobs.
